The Railway History Database

The Railway History Database is an evolving dataset aiming to trace the
development of the world’s railway network. It collects structured data
describing the infrastructure itself as well as companies, agencies,
other players and how they developed over time. Links to documents and
other sources provide a starting point for further research into the
history of the railways and how they changed society.

The database and the project are still in their early stages. But you
are welcome to have a look at what’s there already:

Current status

as of 2017-08-20

Focus is currently on Germany. A somewhat complete list of lines has
been produced that includes all lines in the semi-official directory of
lines (aka ‘VzG’) as well as a large number of disused state, private,
and tertiary railways. Industrial railways and trams have been excluded
for now.

Current work:

This work also covers lines mentioned in the soure now in Poland
and the Czech Republic.

Include information from the database published by Deutsche Bahn
as part of their Open
Data Portal. In particular, this includes information on
stations and other points in the network as well as geographical
data for the network operated by DB Netz.

Include pointers to and information derived from the Law Gazettes
of the various German states, starting with Prusia.

Contact

The Railway History Database is currently maintained by Martin
Hoffmann. You can contact me by email at
hn@nvnc.de. If you have questions,
suggestions, or corrections for the data, you can also create an issue
on Github directly.